In a tradition that started at Rumproast several years ago, I like to wind up the year in blogging by saying a hearty “fuck off!” to five people / trends / things that really need to go away in the coming New Year and invite readers to add their own picks and thoughts.

The competition is fierce every year, but I’m not sure I’ve ever contemplated such a worthy roster of candidates as confronts us here in late 2012. But here goes:

1. Everyone named “Bush.” No Jeb! No George P. Bush. No one else with the last name “Bush” should be discussed in connection with an elected office in the US, ever again. This includes people named Bush who are not actually related to George W. Bush. That’s not fair, but tough shit. No more Bushes. The band “Bush” can stay, though.

2. The expression “baby bump.” I don’t know who started this, but I suspect it was someone like the insufferable Tina Brown. Well, enough, goddamn it. It’s bad enough to discuss royal uteri and celebrity fecundity as if it were even remotely important to anyone but the principals involved without resorting to infantile verbiage.

3. Donald Trump. Has any single earthling who was not a genuine murderous despot ever cried out for an extinction-level asteroid strike as self-importantly, relentlessly and absurdly as Trump? Whether he’s trying to bully Scotsmen or injecting himself into US politics or pimping blatantly racist birther conspiracy theories, Trump is an embarrassment to the human race, and his mug should disappear from my teevee. Forever.

4. The Tea Party. It was never anything more than a Koch-funded rebranding campaign to mitigate the damage to the GOP’s image wrought by walking disaster George W. Bush. But pundits and political operators who should know better still persist in treating it as a genuine grassroots movement. Well, enough of that bullshit. Let’s see no more Gadsden flags, faux Colonial breeches and tricorn hats in 2013.

5. Camille Paglia. This “crassly egocentric, raving twit” should have had the good grace to slink off into oblivion forever when the late, great Molly Ivins laid the definitive smack-down [PDF link] on her more than 20 years ago. And yet she persists. Fuck off, already.

#4 I kinda like it when they all gather together. The odds of someone getting mad and practicing Second amendment remedies on the guy smoking two feet away get better the madder they get. Plus they were the best thing to happen to Democrats this election cycle.

@Gretchen: Amen, but I think the Romneys may already be heading to that kind of vague celebrity limbo where you’ll see their pictures now and then, but have to remind yourself why, exactly, you know who those people are.

Does Paglia persist anywhere except for Joan Walsh’s occasional efforts to drive up traffic? I fully expect her to put up Matt Stoller’s latest tantrum in this same vein. (I assume nutty Matt is just too obscure to make this list).

1. Low-information voters.
2. “Undecided” voters.
3. People who go around saying that “Congress” needs to “stop being babies and work together to get things done.”
2. The process of aging.
3. My dumbass stepmom-in-law.
4. The calorie count in eggnog.
5. Clients who float invoices for 120 days.
6. Chicago weather.
7. Every one of the four or five commercials that make up the complete MSNBC evening ad lineup. Alyssa Milano, I fucking hate you now and I suspect you are actively harming UNICEF revenues at this point.

The Molly Ivins article is priceless. Had I not quit smoking years ago, I’d need a cigarette.

Paglia’s career in a nutshell: Lift a few now-trite memes from your high school reading of Nietzsche, dress them up in bondage leather and thigh-high boots, and use the resulting Weltenshauung as a base from which to declare your frankly pedestrian tastes in music, film and art as more significant than they really are.

David Brooks: And his tut-tutting about the current Republican party while shilling for its most regressive policies. Please take MoU with you. I hear Syria is wonderful this time of the year.

Paul Ryan : The Village Crush, you lost now please go away, join a glibertarian think tank or something.

Deficit Peacocks and Debt Hawks: Find a bathtub and drown your self in it, along with Grover Norquist.

VSPs in the media: Both sides don’t do it and Nate Silver was right. You have been wrong about everything from Iraq War to the last election. We can easily outsource your jobs to elbenty monkeys with typewriters.

Andrew Sullivan : Learn how to calculate a percentage before pontificating on the budget. Take a remedial Math Class along with Megan McCardle. I am sure your minions can run the blog while you are away.

Parents who don’t dress their kids properly for the weather because they think a few degrees higher in temperature equals a heat wave, despite there being lots of wet snow in the playground, can definitely fuck off. (This is directed to parents whose kids had snow pants last week but don’t his week because the parent is a lazy ass, not families who need help obtaining winter gear.)

1. Pete Peterson – go away and try to live on the average SS check, asshole. And take all your asshole buddies with you.
2. Eric Cantor
3. Paul Ryan
4. David Gregory (as a fine representative of Villagr-think)
5. John McCain (you lost, jerk, get over it!)

Maybe this is just a personal ‘go perform a self-fertilization procedure on a nearby orifice’ but Slate’s contrarianism is just dumb and irritating. They have a few good columnists, but they also have a ‘cooking’ column entitled ‘You’re doing it wrong’ that’s just bad for my blood pressure.

Buddy Ryan of the New York Jets can kindly FO, also take Mike Greenberg of Mike and Mike also. Gary Bettman of the NHL I wish you would FOADIAF, just after the LA Kings win the Stanley Cup and good ratings you piss on the faces of hockey fans. Last but not least any one connected to the Breitbart media cult.

Agree 100% with your list, particularly that vile twat Paglia. The woman is impervious to logic, common sense, the experience of others. She freely writes in an authoritative tone about things she knows jack shit about, particularly such utter horseshit as the “pussification” of the US military.

Oh, and Peej. What what you said about the utter sack of worthless shit that is Pete Peterson.

The Learning Channel needs a moratorium on any new reality shows. ‘Shahs of Sunset,’ ‘Sin City,’ ‘Texas Cheer Moms.’ the return of ‘Honey Boo-Boo’ Sweet Jesus!
And ease up on the constant promotion of said shows. i don’t care how many commercials you show in a half-hour slot, nothing is going to make me watch the wretched ‘Cake Boss.”
*********

Oh, on the political side, enough with ANYONE taking seriously anything Dick Morris has to say.

I agree with your list. Some of them would disappear if the following would also FO:
David Gregory
Bob Schieffer
George Will
Cokie Roberts
Chris Matthews
and others in the same category, especially Politico and Joe S.
Windbags, all.

The Tea Party. It was never anything more than a Koch-funded rebranding campaign…

The Koch Party?

Anyways and also to:

1) Palin and all things Palin
2) Ayn Rand and all things Ayn Rand
3) Agree with Tea Party (unless widely referred to as the Koch Party)
4) Rick Santorum and all things Rick Santorum (and I include Todd Akin et al., in the list)
5) Family values (if not used in an entirely ironic sense to point out the complete hypocrisy and ridiculousness of adherents)

1st alternate: Honey Boo Boo

Thank you for asking.

I reserve the right to amend this from moment to moment depending on mood, wind direction, current Charles P. Pierce post, and/or any new stupid coming to my attention.

Can’t believe we got to 41 and no one mentioned Limbaugh. Time for him to get Raptured or whatever. I’ve had enough of anyone believing that he has anything useful to say about anything. he is poison. a disease.

Willard Mitt FuckEverybodyWho’sNotMe Romney. I think he’s sufficiently thick and his ego sufficiently huge that he’ll try something, anything to fulfill his DESTINY of leading the nation to some kind of oblivion. Crush him under a large rock, stat. Toss in the boys, while you’re at it.

Paul Ryan. This fucker is dangerous, not because he’s a brilliant schemer but because the wingnuts have projected their hopes and dreams on his zombie visage. He needs to be sent packing.

Rand Paul. See #2, above. If Ryan doesn’t go forward then Aqua Buddha’s ready, able and even more nuts than his krazy old man.

Wayne LaPierre. Possibly the most vile individual in politics, leading the most corrupt lobbying organization. UN “blue helmets” should drag him off to prison in Singapore.

Disagree about Palin. Every time she opens her yap, more people flee the Republican party. See also, too, Michele Bachmann. I don’t think she’s ever accomplished anything, legislatively, has she? She’s a great purportedly breathing anti-Republican advertisement.

Disagree about Palin. Every time she opens her yap, more people flee the Republican party. See also, too, Michele Bachmann. I don’t think she’s ever accomplished anything, legislatively, has she? She’s a great purportedly breathing anti-Republican advertisement.

I do have to admit, ever since I’ve ensconced myself in my own personal ‘everybody loves everything I like’ internet bubble, it’s become harder to find people or trends that I’m genuinely annoyed at. I can’t even get mad at the more obsessive Homestuck fans.

1. Whoever decided it was a great idea at CNN to report on every little commercial that Crossroads or its ilk puts out
2. Captain Amadou Sandogo – seriously, coups are so fucking old hat
3. The European political coterie that thinks that starving its own citizens in order to make sure the banks get paid on time continues to be the best idea despite four years of evidence to the contrary
4. Anti-Muslim populists in Europe, Israel, and NA, anti-everybody-not-Muslim populists in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, right-wing Hindu nationalists, Chinese Internet Tough Guys, anybody who thinks visiting Yasukuni Shrine is a good idea, and Stephen fucking Harper.
5. Our current surplus of really, really lame anime

Karl Rove can kindly fuck off. His manifest damage to the country is going to take a generation or two to undo, and he’s never been anything but a 3rd rate intelligence who saw a chance to enrich himself while pandering to fools. Seriously, just fuck off.

Least popular Senator out there, and up for re-election in 2014. In Kentucky. (sigh)

Was Chuck Todd not on the list? Perhaps he got missed in the race to dump on David Gregory.

Nate Silver ate Todd’s bacon, eggs, pancakes, desk, minivan.

What is the reason to keep Mr. NBC Numbers? Chuck Todd has been had. He should be freed up to teach introductory statistics at some midwestern community college or high school in the sticks. Maybe he could handle driver’s ed too. What passes for multi-tasking in ToddWorld.

Did Paglia say something lately? I thought she rode off into oblivion when she got married and her raving sexual frustration was slaked a little bit. Her wife is an artist and she was pimping her shows or something.

Thank you for mentioning “baby bump”, Betty. A truly vile piece of jargon that should have been smothered in its crib, pun intended. HATE THIS TERM. Also, too, mostly popularized because of the Beyoncé surrogacy conspiracy theory. Although that one video does look pretty suspicious.

All reality shows need to DIAF. The contestants are egomaniacs, exhibitionists, and/or the criminally naive, the premises are about as socially redeeming as the ingredients list of fracking fluid, the producers are sociopaths, and the cheapskate, easily gulled networks that buy the shows wouldn’t know art if it gave them blood poisoning.

Also, I second (or maybe fifth or sixth by now) the notion that John McCain needs a one-way trip to the Home for the Terminally Get Off My Lawn.

I was going to mention Rove as an alternate but he’s apparently self destructing – at least for the moment – but I decided on Honey Boo Boo (and all things Boo Boo) as a more immediate and unstaunched threat to the universe.

But, upon reflection, I’ll add Rove and the Southern Strategy, in general, as runner up #2.

1. Let’s stop a lot of the bad shit before it gets started by telling religion to fuck off.
2. All Kardashians
3. Gambling phrases: double-down, all in.
4. Karl Rove
5. Whoever needs to die this year so that Cheney can get another heart and keep himself alive until someone throws the fcker in jail.

Chuck Todd, who had as much to do with the Republican suspension of disbelief syndrome as Karl Rove and who, in his underwater way, was talking about a squeeker on the morning of the election.
Jennifer Rubin as much for her face as for her thoroughly pig-headed neo-conness and her terrible writing which reveals her to be a scold and a harridan and a mouthpiece for the Podhoretz family.

@Supernumerary Charioteer: Seriously. The problem with anime is, of course, that the corporate sponsors have been providing less and less funding in real yen so the product is getting progressively shittier with very few exceptions.

Computers can be used for good in anime (GITS, anyone?) but as money-saving device the product is crap.

Some friends/family had me looking up old Sailor Moon this week and even though I was laughing at how stupid and transparent the show is (let’s spend several minutes on the same repeated transformation sequences because it’s cheaper and easier than drawing an actual fight sequence) it was pretty amazing to see that old school, hand-drawn animation. I mean, it looked pretty endearing. I was also impressed by the director’s choice to spend the budget on animating the emotional sequences in a certain episode and cheap out (shaking stills–really) on the final fight sequence. Although BSSM is an insanely dumb series/franchise/whatever I genuinely enjoyed the animation, stories, and the Japanese voice acting. (The US dub is awful… Serena’s voice is like nails on chalkboard.) The voice of Haruka Tenou is a very famous idol singer/voice actress who also voiced Ikari Shinji in Shinseiki Evangelion (NGE).

Paglia has written a new book, Glittering Images: A Journey through Art from Egypt to Star Wars. It received a withering review two weeks ago in the Sunday NYT Book Review. Which was most surprising because the TImes has steadfastly pimped her reputation for years (in fact, there was a flattering pre-publication feature on her).

Art/cultural history is my academic training and profession; let me assure you that Sister Wendy’s opinions on art are more respected than the screeds of Paglia. Whatever critical frissons were set off by her 1990 book Sexual Personae have long since dissipated, and she is now little more than a caricature in the field.

Frankly, I was startled to see her name amidst the rogues’ gallery here. I would have thought Naomi Wolf would be a more likely figure of opprobrium.

the entire “Village.” Let’s just cancel the TV, print and book contracts of every media figure who appeared in any major newspaper’s editorial page or on any TV news talk show more than three times before 2008. Sure, we’ll lose a few good voices but think of the fresh voices we’ll gain.

Great list! Loved that Molly Irvin’s article about that over-praised twat, Paglia. That she is showing up again like a bad smell is bad enough.

On my list (in no order)

Chris Matthews – if I have to hear about his book (which he goes on about at every opportunity), or the time when he and Tip O’Neil got drunk and laughed their asses off and how that leads to some “advice he has to give to the President (who won without it, you fat fuck), I might need to borrow a damn drone. Fuck off already!

Chuck Todd: chinless fucks have their new leader (sorry Greenwald!). Stand right next to Matthews when I get my hands on a drone, fucktard. How the hell did this guy get to be such a MSM twat?

Jennifer Rubin: To the bigwigs at WAPO – be brave and allow that bitch to carry out her threat to post your mexican donkey sex show pictures. Because if that means getting to fire her wingnut ass, all will be forgiven. Between her deep fellating Romney and Ryan throughout this year and her endlessly wrong postings about everything, WAPO continues its disservice to its readers.

John McCain – get the fuck off of my lawn and go wave your fists at clouds in outer space. Have several seats already…

@Steve M.: Reminds me of the joke (holy crap, I’ve become my father) about the guy who buys a newspaper at a newsstand every day, looks at the front page and put it down again. Every day. Finally the newsagent asks the guy why he does that. The guy says “I’m checking the obituaries.” Newsagent says “but the obits are on an inside page” and the guys says “not the obit I’m looking for. When that SOB dies it’ll be on the front page.”

@handsmile: Boy am I glad to hear that. My younger daughter is an art history major and loved all the Sister Wendy videos she occasionally got to watch during her AP Art History class in high school. She’ll be very happy to have an actual professional agree with her on this.

Happy to read of your daughter’s choice of majors; it’s an honorable if rarely lucrative endeavor.

But just to be clear: Sister Wendy’s programs are a fine and often endearing introduction to Western art history. What I most admire is her enthusiasm for the works of art she discusses and her encouragement of viewers to take seriously the enterprises of art-making and art appreciation. She is an amateur in the best and truest sense of the word.

As I trust your daughter has already discovered, however, from this prelude one must seek out other art historians for more sophisticated scholarship and analysis. And to be sure, Camille Paglia is not among those.

1. McCain. For the love of God, McCain.
2. Limbaugh.
3. Trump
4. Ted Nugent. Please, please, please let him make good on his promise of death or jail.
5. The term “I know, right?” Fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I have, however, adopted “really?” and use it as appropriate.

I’m not in the ‘computers ruined animation’ camp. It may have looked that way six to twelve years ago, when a lot of studios were switching over to computer-aided animation from hand-drawn and ended up producing a lot of static, fuzzy, muddled, depthless shit, but a lot of the stuff today, at least in the action department, actually looks pretty good. It’s not Akira, but it’s not, say, Noir.

I think the problem with regards to the falloff in studio funding is the fact that it has to be made up with ‘safe’ funding in order to be made, and the only two sources of ‘safe’ funding are from pre-built fanbases or from chasing the otaku merchandise market.

Take Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere. It got a budget. It looks good. It was a pretty high-profile release. It even got two seasons, which is getting rarer. But it only got that funding because it’s based off of a cash-cow light novel franchise and is chock full of otaku fetish princesses, and it ended up being a pretty terrible adaptation. The first six episodes were an incomprehensible data dump introducing 40-some-odd characters, most of whom only got an establishing character moment and a few lines of dialogue. If you hadn’t already read the novels, you were close to completely lost.

The rest of the series out there seem to be adaptations of risque for-boys romance comics and light novels, anodyne Lucky Star clones, and shows where they turn Oda Nobunaga into a girl and have her blow up space battleships with lightsaber katanas. And I think I could use that sentence to describe every season for the last three or four years, because for whatever reason (tits) those all sell merchandise.

There’s been good stuff – I’m watching Jojo now, which has been a pretty solid adaptation, and two seasons ago Sakamichi no Apollon and Mysterious Girlfriend X were must-watches, but it’s been pretty barren otherwise.

@handsmile: Wow, she is such a character of herself. Visual arts are definitely not her background/training, but she fucked an artist so now she’s an expert. Jeez. Actually, I guess the fires must be banked (it’s been a while, hasn’t it?) because she’s actually writing again.

I liked Sexual Personae. It was certainly more accessible than the turgid French-influenced academic style in vogue in US academe at the time. But getting famous went to her head, and fast. Her column on Salon in the 1990s was, wow, something else. I also remember the giant ego she had about male fans wanting to date her. She had some sort of gay man envy going on bad.

Molly Ivins wasn’t the only one to do a Paglia take-down. Probably forgotten outside of the Lesbian/bi/queer women community is that Susie Bright (“Susie Sexpert”) interviewed Paglia. Much more self-aware than her subject (she wrote a funny column about her sexual fantasy about seducing National Embarrassment VP Dan Quayle, while Paglia, after defending Clinton against his non-European detractors over his affair, had some sort of revulsion-reaction, fell in love with GW Bush’s “gravitas” (Jen Rubin style, so not kidding) and violently tore into anyone who thought he was an obnoxious know-nothing dumbass without an ounce of class) her reaction to Paglia’s resentment coupled with ignorance of 80’s lesbian culture was met with more pity than anything else.

Yeah, I heard Rush Limbaugh via Media Matters call Camille Paglia a feminist. Uh, I don’t think so. Last I heard, she was attracted by the idea of becoming a lesbian, but couldn’t find anyone who wanted to “do it” with her.
As a feminist, she might have been a wannabe at some point, but I seriously doubt feminists allowed her into their club either.

@Supernumerary Charioteer: well I agree that while there has been a load of series that are somewhat less than choices… we have had this season Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, the third season of Bakuman; plus Robotics Notes has been good and appreciated you mentioning the two best series from last season.

@handsmile: Yeah, she’s figured that out, but loved her enthusiasm, and because she’s a teenager, her goofiness. She says the art history class she’s currently taking is the best class she’s ever had. She also understands that it’s not an easy industry to work in, but one of her uncles is the head of an art history department at one of the country’s highly regarded universities so she has a more realistic sense of what’s ahead of her. She hopes to do art education at a university, but that may change, she’s still young.

1. Maggie Brooks, Monroe County (Rochester) Executive, for moving taxable items out of the property tax and into fees. Hey, she kept the taxes flat for 9 straight years.
2. Legos. Crazy expensive.
3. What redshirt said in 318
4. Companies that don’t give raises
5. Some conservative asshat named Boris who was on Stand Up with Pete Dominick.

I would like to add that republican with the bad hair & the fake tan. I think his name is Bonher or something anyhow he’s the head republican. The guy gives me the creeps. I’d like Stephen Harper,Prime Minister of Canada, & bum boy to the Chinese government to fuck off & mvoe it along before he finishes giving Canada away to China.

It might be nice if the republicans & govenor of Michigan would fuck off. Perhaps he might be happy working in Hondorus for a $1 a day. They dont do Unions their either.

@NotMax: Heh, well played, and I take full responsibility for making that too juicy to pass up. In my defense, it was late and I was dealing with my violently ill 85-year-old mother, so my head wasn’t really in the game.

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